Slave to Darkness
by CuriouslyEmpty
Summary: Empress Emily ascends to her throne on her day of majority; Lord Protector Havelock reflects on past events.


He remembered the mask, soulless eyes and that leering face drenched in the blood of guardsmen. The loyalists had crested the final stairs to the Palace, armed men true of heart at their backs, and had found naught but death. Brave men, armed with shot and steel blades prepared to die valiantly for the true Empress stood slack-jawed before a room of carnage and death. Bodies were slumped against pillars and tables, missing heads, limbs, or simple annihilated.

The traitors had died to a man, here amidst the finery of Empire they rested; cleaved with blade and bullet, sorcery and gunpowder. The architect of this destruction was a single man clad in black; motionless save for the undulation at the edges of it's form where tangible met the unknown and dissolved, blood in a puddle of water, slowly drifting to the currents of insanity.

It was seated on the throne, neck slumped with it's 'face' in it's hands clearly at the point of exhaustion; surrounded by bloodied corpses on all sides, it resembled some dark god manifested flesh right there in Imperial Dunkirk. In the brief moment when the clambering group of loyalists burst through the final doorway and into the throne room, it had looked up and met his gaze, inky black like the eyes of the Outsider, himself before vanishing into the unholy shadows that birthed it.

They day was theirs, yet there was no celebration. The men didn't speak, and Havelock didn't blame them one iota. A dark servant of the Outsider had granted them victory, and none could for sure say whether this was a good thing or not. However the word was out, and there was truly no stopping it: the Lady Emily was returned; long live the Empress!.

The Lord Protector, the Imperial Regent, former Admiral Havelock woke in a cold sweat with an unknowable name upon his lips. Beside him, his wife mumbled in her sleep, before rolling over and returning to her dreams. Grasping blindly in the graying light of half-dawn, he reached for the knob that would kindle the oillamp to flame. Rubbing his aching joints, he stumbled out of bed before rubbing his temples; It was coronation day. Grimly, he started to dress.

The roar of the crowd was like a leviathan, impacting all assembled with the physical might of a god. Imperial Dunkirk was assembled in all their glory to witness the ascension of their Empress, Lady Emily to the Deepwater Throne, and thus take her place upon her mother's hallowed seat. The Guard was assembled in force today, teeming multitudes of grim faced men prepared to die for their Empress. If possible the roar grew in force, rising a primordial thing from the throats assembled: it was starting.

The Lady Emily, Empress of the Dornian Archipelago, the thousand isles, and the fortress city of Dunkirk was majesty defined. Pale, almost translucent skin eerily defined against the stark of the Imperial white she donned. She was sharp and to the point, and had, point blank almost nine years ago asked Havelock if was going to usurp her throne. He still remembered those eyes, pinning him in place with a gravity that should be beyond a child of such years. He had knelt before this tiny girl of ten, and drawn his blade, angling it in reverse against his chest. They'd stood like that for a full minute. The next day he'd been made the Lord Protector.

Alongside the guard stood the midnight clad overseers - warrior priests of an order reforged from the stain of heresy. Their halberds a stark contrast to the muskets of the Guard; they looked out unmoving over the seething mass of the crowd. There was distrust there, between the men of the Guard, and the men of the Flame. However, all served the Empress, and in that there was unity. The High-Overseer stood, robes streaked with the orange flames of his order bearing the crown of office, lined white gold upon an almost silvery enamel. His face was pinched, yet there was the glimmer of respect there - there'd not been a ruler of such _anima_ for a century at least.

As she neared the throne, the air alongside the awaited Empress seemed to writhe with shadow- flecks of midnight flame shimmering in and out of existence by the whim of some insane god. Suddenly where one had stood, two now looked out over Imperial Dunwall; one of purest white, the other an unholy angel wreathed in a garb of pure darkness. On it's face Havelock recognized the thing that had haunted his nightmares for the past decade, eyes of pitch from behind which a grinning mechanical abomination stared.

It bore a blade on it's hip, and in it's hand it bore... Gods above and below it bore a still beating heart, flesh crimson and swollen. Havelock wanted to look away, but he dared not a horrified fascination gripped him and he felt transfixed before this horror. It's other hand bore a ring, the very same ring that Havelock now fingered on his own hand - a simple band of silver with the crest of the leviathan upon it's face: the sigil of the Lord Protector. Suddenly, everything snapped together and Havelock reeled with realization and dawning memories made clear.

Corvo Attano, dishonored, ashamed, and lost amidst the rot and stink of the dungeons had not died, forgotten amidst the criminals he so despised. Havelock remembered a day nearly twenty five years previously when Attano had walked Jesemine in much the same way to her own throne, and everything came together: Mother and daughter; protector and Father: the symmetry in these actions echoed across the decades and it seemed Havelock was the only one who saw it. As if in recognition of this, the dark figure turned, the edges of it's figure blurring with some unholy power and it nodded at Havelock; a genuine motion of respect; a mutual recognition of services rendered. Then Emily stood alone before the noon-day sun, the crowd, before muffled now surged again in volume, reminiscent of the tides and the surf. Havelock wearily nodded slightly, then, gesturing to his personal guard, sank to one knee in fealty to his Empress.


End file.
